“Alcohol is Something That Been With Us Like a Common Cold”: Community Perceptions of American Indian Drinking

Abstract

This study examined tribal members’ perspectives on alcohol, risk factors, consequences, and community responses. Focus groups were conducted with five American Indian tribes between 1997 and 2001. Participants were knowledgeable of the cultural lives of their reservation communities. Although there was agreement regarding the pervasiveness of heavy drinking, participants reported different opinions about the meaning of alcohol and appropriate intervention strategies. Three dilemmas were identified, suggesting that community ambivalence may serve as a barrier to reducing problem drinking. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Association of the firewater myth with drinking behavior among American Indian and Alaska Native college students.

“…In a study conducted with Navajo participants, even minimal alcohol consumption (i.e., one drink) was seen as “a bad thing to do” by the majority of both non-drinkers (71% of males and 74% of females) and drinkers (57% of males and 62% of females; May & Smith, 1988). Likely related to these findings, 63% of Navajo participants agreed that American Indians have a unique physical weakness to alcohol (i.e., endorsed the FM) and 94% agreed that “Indians have a problem with alcohol.” A more recent study with participants from five different tribes similarly found that most American Indians participants held negative opinions about alcohol (Yuan et al, 2010) and in a study of rural Alaska Natives, participants expressed the belief that it was not possible for Alaska Natives to consume any alcohol without experiencing harm (Mohatt et al, 2004). …”

Association of Contextual Factors with Drug Use and Binge Drinking among White, Native American, and Mixed-Race Adolescents in the General Population

“…Generally, Native American populations are socially and economically disadvantaged; family and community disorganization is likely to be associated with psychological and behavioral problems for this group (Hawkins, Cummins, & Marlatt 2004; HeavyRunner-Rioux, & Hollist 2010; Young, & Joe 2009; Yuan et al 2010). However, few studies have used representative samples; instead, they have focused on reservation-based samples.…”

Taking Humor Seriously: Talking about Drinking in Native American Focus Groups

“…For the quantitative analyses, data from a sample of 1660 men and women were collected by structured interviews on risk behaviors. A description of the larger study appears in Koss and colleagues (2003), and findings from quantitative and qualitative analyses appear in Yuan and colleagues (2006) and in Yuan and colleagues (2010), respectively. Tribes sampled in the northwest and northern Plains had locales near respective reservations that sold alcohol, whereas alcohol was sold some distance from the southwest reservations.…”

“…Themes were developed by data segmentation [chunking] and were cross-checked by coordinator and coder, who separately coded a trial transcript and compared matches, overlaps, and dissimilarities until agreement was reached. For a description of qualitative methods for the focus groups, see Yuan and colleagues (2010), and for a description of coding qualitative data, see Hruschka and colleagues (2004) and Ryan and Bernard (2003). Atlas.ti 5.0 was used to manage and analyze data.…”

“… 5 Consequences of drinking have been described in other publications (Yuan et al 2010). “Abuse” ’ and “violence” were discussed one or more times during the interview by all five tribes, and “accidents” and “hangover” were discussed by three tribes.…”